Let me begin with the fundamental premise that creating any successful advertising campaign, whether it be AdWords or a magazine ad, requires testing and constant fine-tuning. No one ever gets it exactly right the first time.

Whether it be a client’s campaign or one I’m developing for them, the first implementation of an ad group provides valuable information about the market niche you are trying to penetrate. Once you reach the point where you have statistically significant data, you can develop a plan for taking it to the next level.

When the first batch of data becomes available, which could take three days or three months to gather, depending on the number of clicks you receive, you have an idea about the amount of traffic (impressions & clicks) for an individual keyword and the all-important Google AdWords quality score.

If you find yourself in a situation where you have a keyword that:

correctly describes your product or service

cannot be further specified by attaching adjectives that make it more precise without receiving the dreaded status of “Low search volume”

and still have a very low (2-4) quality score

you have a real challenge with limited options.

Most advertisers who find themselves in this predicament want to improve the quality score because:

their ad is not displaying at all (quality score of 0-1) or

their ad is receiving reduced impressions (quality score of 3-6) or

is resulting in an exorbitant CPC (quality score of 2-4).

Chances are, you find yourself in this position because Google has determined that very few, if any advertisers are able to produce a consistently good user experience for that keyword. By this I mean that the metrics Google uses to rate user experiences (CTR, bounce rate, number of pages visited, time on your website, etc.) are relatively low. And in most cases, the reason they are low is because the keyword phrase is very broad. Meaning it is used by a wide range of user interests and therefore it appeals to no one.

When this happens, the reason Google provides is that the quality score you are given for that keyword is most heavily influenced by “how well that keyword has performed throughout the Google system”. This condition can account for as much as 60% of the quality score you receive! It is the largest single component.

In this situation, there are only a few things you can do, with none of them being all that easy or inexpensive. Plus, there will be no guarantee they will make a significant impact, at least in the short-term.

If you do decide to take action, here are the steps I recommend:

Determine which keywords have sufficient search volume to warrant their own ad group.

Create separate ad groups for each one of those keywords and perform additional research to insure you have a full complement of negative keywords. This will ultimately help improve your CTR.

Insure a high degree of relevance between the keyword and the ad copy headline.

Once the new ad groups and landing pages are in place, bid to rank in the number two position.

Here is why you want your ads to appear in the “top” positions, meaning they appear over the organic search results. The CTR of a keyword when it appears in the top position can be many times more than when it appears in the right-hand column or what google calls the “other” position. To see what I mean, run a “Segment” report and chose “Top vs. Other”. You might be surprised.

The single biggest component of keyword quality score is CTR, and in this case, where your performance is being overwhelmingly influenced by “how well that keyword has performed throughout the Google system”, you must demonstrate significantly better CTR performance than the other advertisers. I believe that metric is somewhere in the range of 5% CTR or better.

If you are reading this article you have either made the decision to significantly restructure your AdWords account or you are seriously considering it.

Chances are, you are doing this because your account suffers from what I call the broad match effect. The purpose of this article is to prepare you for the journey we will be on as we transition from your current account structure to the new one.

Making any change to your AdWords account involves some degree of risk. AdWords is an extremely complex and dynamic system. If you allow me to restructure your account, there will be certain risks, but the risk is minimized because we know:

what the problem is,

what to do about it,

what the result will be and

what to expect during the transition.

I want to elaborate on this because there will be short-term setbacks and long-term ramifications. You may see some alarming performance data during the transition. Some of this performance data is real and represents actual short-term and long-term higher costs and some of it is not as real, just misleading.

The real part comes two factors; higher CPC associated with more restrictive keyword matching options and from the fact that we will be reestablishing quality scores for keywords and ad copy. Yes, ad copy has a quality score, you just can’t see it like you can for keywords, but it is real and it does have an impact on performance. Finding the balance of ad quality and optimal ad CTR is tricky business and can only be accomplished through testing. In addition, I recommend giving your Max CPC bids a boost in the early going to establish a higher CTR. As you know, the biggest component of keyword quality score is CTR.

Here is a graphic I created to illustrate how keyword matching options effect your CPC, exposure and quality of visitors.

This is a an alarming reality for some advertisers and you should be prepared to spend 50-500% more CPC when you make this Major Chance to your campaign structure!

The part which is not so obvious is your cost per conversion. Because conversion tracking uses a 30-day cookie, cost/conv data for any given keyword on any given day will change based on newly registered conversions. That’s because conversions and transactions get attributed to the date of the click (on your ad), not the date the conversion occurred.

Here is something for you to think about. If you want to know the effect a change you make today has on cost/conv, you need to wait at least sixty days and then look back thirty days. Otherwise you will be dealing with incomplete and misleading data. You need to resist evaluating the new campaign based on short-term data. Also keep in mind that the number of impressions and clicks can vary considerably from day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month. You must be willing to have the necessary confidence, commitment and patience or you should not be doing this.

Depending on your market, conversion tracking data can increase many fold over the life of the cookie, as visitors return to your site (from non-AdWords links) and convert. I make the distinction, “from non-AdWords links”, such as a bookmark, organic listing or website referrals, because AdWords attributes the conversion to the last-clicked ad, keyword and search term, even if the keyword or ad is paused.

I make the point about paused keywords because you will continue to register conversions in your account from keywords in your old campaigns, which may be paused, and you probably won’t be looking at those keywords when we launch the new campaign(s).

The broad-match wild card effect – With all the down-side of using broad-matched keywords, there is one positive aspect worth mentioning, and it can be significant.

The fact is that some search queries can only trigger ads using broad-matched keywords. Unless you have spent considerable time pouring through server logs and search term reports, you probably don’t realize just how many possible unique search queries there are for your broad-matched keywords. It’s essentially unlimited. Some of them are great and some are dogs. The dogs are why you have been racking up all those relatively poor quality impressions and clicks. But notice just how many of those strange ones produced conversions! Chances are that those strange search terms will not trigger your ad with anything other than a broad-matched keyword. If you tried to target that same search query with a more targeted keyword match type, you would almost certainly be given a status of Low search volume.

Here is something else to consider. When you use broad-matched keywords, you become eligible for a very large number of ad auctions. At the time of the ad auction, only a fraction of those eligible, actually get displayed. There are so many dynamic factors at play, that it becomes unpredictable, especially when you have an unusual search query. I call this the broad-match wildcard effect. While you might be very happy that your ad was displayed for a particular search query, it will be impossible to insure that it will be displayed the next time that search query is performed.

While we will try to create keywords and matching options that display your ad for as many relevant search queries as possible, there is only so much we can do. We don’t have complete control over the AdWords system and it isn’t 100% predictable. Therefore, if we use more restrictive keyword match types, you must be willing to accept the fact that we will not be able to display your ad for every conceivable search query. If your logs indicate that you have received a significant number of conversions from search queries that we cannot reliably link to a keyword in the new design, we should not implement a completely new design. A partial redesign, focusing on a segment of the account or campaign may be in order.

The importance of fine-tuning – Most advertisers can’t appreciate the importance of or the amount of time required to fine-tune a campaign once it’s been launched. No one ever get’s everything right when the campaign is first launched.

When the initial campaign is launched, default bid prices are used, which amount to little more than a guess as to what the bid price should be in order to receive the desired ad ranking for each keyword. It’s simply not practical to research bid prices for a large number of keywords prior to launch. In the beginning it will be necessary for me to monitor and make adjustments at least once a day and then it tails off over time. The amount of time this requires depends on the number of keywords, ad groups and campaigns in your account.

Each keyword is unique and is actually a “market” unto itself. Therefore, until the keyword is actually searched on and your ads receive “clicks”, you can’t be sure where your ad will appear in the ranking or how much you need to bid to obtain the rank that is appropriate. Some keywords are simply much more valuable to you than others. It is an iterative process and the two most important factors are 1) how much traffic your campaign receives and 2) how much time I have to work on it. Some of my clients have made a serious mistake by not allowing me to perform the fine-tuning process once the new campaign is launched or they underestimate the amount of work required to perform this important task.

Before we begin the transition, I recommend that you implement Google Analytics. It offers data you won’t see in AdWords, such as bounce rate, number of pages per visit, % new visitors and average time on site. These are all valuable pieces of data that help us establish relative values for specific keywords, ad copy and web pages. In addition, you can set up “goals”, which are like conversions. But unlike the AdWords 30-day cookie, the Google Analytics cookie can last up to two years! This can help give us a more accurate cost/conv.

So let’s review why you might want to incur the additional expense of redesigning your AdWords account and seemingly subject yourself to the risk.

The characteristics I describe in the broad match effect, implies you don’t have the desired control over what’s going on in your AdWords account. You aren’t able to control what ad a user sees for any given search query, your ads are being shown for irrelevant searches (unwanted impressions), you are paying for a lot of poor quality visitors and you are spending a lot of time making changes to your account without any real confidence you know what you are doing. You’re doing stuff like; ad copy changes, new keywords, experimenting with keyword matching options, adding a lot of negative keywords and changing bid prices. Probably not the best use of your time.

The answer is, you will get:

Better search query to ad copy relevance

Higher CTR

Higher quality scores

Lower CPC

Lower cost/conv

Fewer unwanted impressions

Higher CTR

Lower CPC

Lower cost/conv

Fewer unwanted clicks

Lower ad spend

Lower cost/conv

Easier on-going account maintenance

Lower costs

Less of your time

Better ROI

The confidence in knowing what’s actually happening

Frees you up to focus on other things

The confidence in knowing you are in control

Freedom to try new things

A happier life 🙂

One final word of caution. You have probably come to the realization that the new account design I discussed is pretty involved. Well, you’re right. Therefore, if you or anyone else make changes to the new campaign, chances are they will do more harm than good. It would be like hiring someone to tune your baby grand piano and then making a few minor adjustments on your own! Not a good idea.

One of the most important skills of a Google AdWords advertiser that separates the expert from the novice, is an acute understanding of keyword matching options. The right use of matching options can make a considerable difference in the complexity, efficiency and performance of any AdWords account.

Since I’ve been managing AdWords accounts professionally, I’ve had occasion to work with many advertisers with accounts that have been active for several years, built mostly on broad-matched keywords. This type of account exhibits some rather interesting characteristics that present some unique challenges. When I see an account that exhibits these characteristics, I can be fairly confident that:

The advertiser is displaying their ad for a very wide range of search queries, but not on a consistant basis for any given search query. A classic situation for broad-matched keywords.

Their impression share is relatively low. In other words, their ads are not being shown as often as they could be due to daily budget restrictions or ad ranking.

They are probably spending more than they want or need to spend on click charges.

They are probably seeing “Limited by budget” or very close to seeing it as they are forced to continually raise their daily budget.

The broad-matched keyword is the most powerful, and yet potentially the most dangerous of all the match types. It was designed primarily for the novice advertiser who doesn’t have the time or inclination to learn the finer points of PPC advertising. A few years ago, Google quietly re-introduced the broad-match and gave it even more reach. In some circles, they called it, “extended broad-match”. The extended part had to do with an extension that allowed ads to be shown for synonyms of the keyword.

The ability to trigger ads for synonyms is what gives the broad-match its powerful and potentially dangerous characteristics. If you want to get a sense of how broad the reach is, here are a few suggestions:

Run a search term report on broad-matched keywords in your account. You’ll probably be shocked.

Use the AdWords keyword tool and make sure to uncheck the “Only show ideas closely related to my search terms” box.

Run a keyword-to-search query report in your Google Analytics account.

Most of the time, you are going to find some pretty unexpected search queries and you’ll wish you could get the money back you spent on those poor quality visitors. In many cases, this is where your daily budget has gone.

However, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes the market niche is so unique that the broad-match works pretty well. And sometimes the advertiser understands the subtle nuances of the broad-match and keeps it in check with a healthy complement of negative keywords. But these are usually exceptions to the rule.

There are additional unintended consequence of the unchecked broad-match:

You are essentially competing with yourself, because you have multiple keywords entering the same auction.

You lose control over which of your ads displays for any given keyword or search query.

You have limited ability to prioritize visitors because the broad-matched keyword can trigger an impression for such a wide range of search queries.

Another characteristic that is common to this situation is to have campaigns that are “Limited by budget”. To see just how much they are limited, run an Impression Share report. This will show how much exposure is lost due to 1) budgeting shortfall and 2) less than optimal keyword ranking, which is essentially your quality score.

“Limited by budget” is a confirmation there is more traffic available than you are able to afford, and when you consider that some of the budget is being consumed by poor quality visitors, clearly there is an issue, because it also means your ad is not being displayed for some of your best prospects.

What you want is a way to minimize your exposure to poor quality users and maximize your exposure to good quality prospects. Furthermore, you want to have enough control so that any given search query displays the best possible ad copy.

In spite of the drawbacks of using broad-matched keywords, there is one positive aspect you need to be aware of as you consider your options. I call it Remnant keyword impressions.

Some search queries can only be triggered by broad-matched keywords. This means that if you are determined to display your ad for as many search queries as possible that might be used by a qualified prospect, you will need to use some broad-matched keywords. To appreciate this, some background is required.

In the old days, before Google went public, you could have almost unlimited keywords in your account, and as long as any given keyword received a minimum CTR of .005 (5 clicks out of 1,000 impressions) Google would display your ad when it matched that keyword. That’s now ancient history.

Today, if you have a keyword that Google determines to have Low search volume, that keyword probably will not display your ad even if someone types that exact search phrase. This has several benefits for Google and one big negative for advertisers. It forces advertisers to compete for a fewer number of keywords, which drives up CPCs, and it gives Google the freedom to display ads that maximize their profit. This is just one example of how AdWords is evolving. The challenge is that it’s making it more competitive and more costly for advertisers and more profitable for Google.

So what are the options? This is an over-simplification, but to the point:

Freeze the ad spend and live with the status quo. Essentially do nothing.

Increase your daily budget to insure you are maximizing your exposure. Essentially throw more money at the problem.

Have a robust list of negative keywords and be relentless about staying on top of it. But that won’t solve all the problems because it may not be enough to reduce ad spend to an acceptable level and still have all the desired exposure. This also won’t do anything to provide the necessary control that’s required to 1) effectively match keywords to ad copy, 2) match keywords to search queries and 3) prioritize keyword ranking based on their relative value to your business.

Create an account structure that gives you more control over who sees your ad, what keywords trigger which ad and manage how much you spend to display your ad for any given search query.

If you elect to go the route of redesigning your account, here are some things you need to be aware of.

Developing, implementing and fine-tuning a new account design is tedious, time-consuming work. The critical element of the process is keyword research. The secret to proper keyword research is having the right tools and knowing how to use them. How long it takes is a function of many factors, but tends to track with the number of products and services being promoted.

I don’t like having to create new campaigns and running them while the old campaign is still enabled because the old campaign can, and often does, compete and win against the new campaign. But sometimes it can’t be avoided. During the time when both campaigns are running we have relatively poor performance. I prefer a step-by-step approach, where we carve out specific niches and test to insure we are getting the desired results.

There will be short-term setbacks (higher costs) until the new keywords and ads build up their own history, based on critical elements, such as click-through-rate and quality score. This could take 2-3 weeks, during which time you could be paying higher Avg. CPCs. As the quality scores increase and rankings improve, we can begin to reduce the Max CPC. See my article titled The elephant in Google.

The way the existing account is structured will not match up exactly to the new design. There may be times when it’s necessary to turn off larger sections of the existing account in order to bring on new keywords and ad groups. This may result in a temporary loss of exposure to certain search queries. Also, until all elements of the existing campaign are turned off, it can continue to compete with the new campaign, which has inhalant inefficiencies.

An internet advertiser goes through many phases in their quest to maximize return on investment for their website. This is an indication of how their thought process matures and what they can actually do to improve the ROI.

I want more business – Those who are unfamiliar with internet search advertising usually see it as a new channel, meaning another way to acquire prospects they can convert into customers. Without the benefit of understanding all the various intricacies, processes, technology, etc., they are focused on the end result, more customers. They understand the need for a website and realize that search advertising is a way for people who use search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), to find their website, out of the literally millions of other websites on the internet.

I want more visitors to my web site – Because being found by the search engines and appearing high enough in the ranking, typically on the first page, seemed relatively easy using AdWords, they naively equate more website visitors with more business. Initially, they are very encouraged by the sudden increase of website traffic and they are already beginning to count the money that they expect to be rolling in. But this increased traffic comes with a cost and then they begin to realize that more traffic doesn’t necessarily mean more business.

I want better qualified visitors to my site – Either through their own hands-on experience or through on-going discussions with their campaign manager, they come to appreciate that all visitors are not equal. Unless the initial selection of keywords is extremely well chosen, there will be only a fraction of visitors that actually turn into suspects, then suspects into prospects and prospects into customers. The unfortunate reality is that search engine users don’t read ads, they scan them. Especially if your ad is near the top position, users simply click the higher ads and then decide once they see the website, if they want to stay. But you already paid for that click!

I want to know what visitors are doing when they visit my site – Just like a store owner who wants to see why a seemingly competent sales person isn’t bringing in sales, even while they are spending all this time with prospects, they will want to know as much as they can about visitors that are coming to their website, especially if they are paying to bring them there. This is why analytics and conversion tracking are so important.

I don’t want those kind of visitors, but I do want these kind – Fortunately, technology provides us with tools (web analytics & conversion tracking) that allow us to gather and report information about website visitors. We can see things like, what search engine referred the visitor, what search query they used, what keyword in their campaign was triggered, what pages they visited and what actions they took, like downloading a coupon or buying something! Once we know what keywords perform well and which ones don’t, we can take appropriate steps to eliminate or encourage certain visitors to the site.

I want visitors to take some action when they visit my site – The best way to categorize visitors is through their behavior and the best way to understand their behavior is to give them something to do when they visit your site. The more things you can track, the more things you can assign a value to. Once you know what keywords lead to which actions, then you can begin to monetize keywords and visitor behavior.

I want visitors to take a specific action when they visit my site – Once the keywords and visitor actions are prioritized and monetized, then you can begin managing the process! Now you are ready to appreciate my article on PPC Implementation Strategies.

I am willing to pay this much for that type of visitor – When you can assign a value to a specific type of visitor and you have enough historical data on that type of visitor, then you can determine just how much you are willing to spend to get them. Now you are able to look at the process as an investment. You invest this much in a process and get this much out. And remember, search advertising Google AdWords) is the fastest direct response marketing mechanism ever developed. You can adjust your campaign in a matter of minutes!

The process I use to develop a new campaign when there is account history is one I developed on my own through trial and error. In all the years I’ve been following other industry experts and pundants, no one has ever discussed anything like it. Perhaps because it’s too nuance or too difficult to know when and how to apply it. Nevertheless, I will attempt to explain.

Knowing when to apply these techniques depends on the quantity and quality of account history, specifically search terms, analytics and conversion data. Given my market niche, which is helping those who are already AdWords advertisers, almost all my clients have some account history. However, in the absence of any historical data, I usually rely on more traditional forms of research, such as keyword tools, relevant searches, competitor’s websites, etc. What many advertisers don’t realize is that a robust account history is like a custom keyword tool specifically designed for them. They just need to know how to use it.

As with any form of advertising, achieving success with AdWords comes down to optimizing your return on investment. There will always be more traffic than you can afford to buy so optimization is essential. Optimizing your AdWords account is a process of determining what works, what doesn’t and applying probability theory to whatever lies between. The process I use for determining what works and what doesn’t is based on visitor behavior and what I believe is their intent, based on the user’s search query. Did the visitor take the action you wanted? What was the relative quality of their search query?

The data element I want to focus on is a search term, because a search term is as close as we can get to knowing what the prospect is thinking. Not to be confused with keywords, which are tools for determining what search terms will trigger your ad. If we know what they are thinking, we can either filter that visitor using negative keywords or encourage them with ad copy, custom landing pages and calls to actions. See my article titled A chain of success.

Focusing on search terms and not keywords, and applying probability theory, is what separates the novice AdWords advertiser from the professional.

The fact is, you simply can’t afford to target every search term that has in the past or might convert in the future. When you consider targeting a search term, you need to consider the probability that you will be able to convert that visitor. Can you convert them 5% of the time or 1% of the time? Where you draw the line should be based on the lifetime value of that visitor. How you determine the lifetime value of a prospect will be different for every advertiser and potentially every search term. If you can convert visitors searching for blue widgets at a rate of 5% and those searching for red widgets 1% of the time, chances are you can’t afford to advertise red widgets using PPC because you can’t make the numbers work. It’s a matter of economics.

In AdWords, we use conversion tracking, in Analytics it’s bounce rate, number of pages visited and time on page that help you make these important decisions. AdWords is a very powerful and feature-rich advertising platform, but it has limitations. Prospects are not going to write an essay about what they are looking for and why; they are only going to use 3-4 “core words” in a search query. We have to be able to read between the lines and assign a probability as to whether we can convert them. This is a skill that has taken me years to develop and is a significant factor that has contributed to my success.

Knowing enough about the niche market you are targeting is critical. I go out of my way to tell prospects that I don’t pretend to know their industry, their market, their competition, their product or service. That is why I emphasize that my business model is a collaborative process. The degree to which the client knows their market and can help me understand it, will determine how successful we will be in optimizing their AdWords account. For example, if I am not aware that you don’t sell red widgets when I’m building a campaign for widgets, then you will be spending money on clicks that you can’t convert and that will be reflected in your ROI.

But it’s not as simple as knowing the search terms that work because AdWords has limitations when it comes to using keywords. If we try to be too specific with keywords, Google slaps us with the status of “Low search volume”. See my article titled The keyword conundrum. On the other hand, if we use keywords that are too broad, we subject ourselves to a lot of poor quality visitors and dangerously low keyword quality scores. See my article titled The broad-match effect.

The degree to which these challenges are present varies greatly from one campaign to the next. For some, we can achieve an acceptable level of success relatively quickly. For others it is a painstakingly slow and costly process. A lot of it has to do with the number of keywords in play and how easy it is to describe the advertiser’s product or service. The length of time it takes to develop a campaign design also depends on how much historical data exists in the account. If the market is well defined and the search vocabulary is relatively simple, having a robust account history is less importance. On the other hand, if the search vocabulary is more complex and there is relatively little account history, then the advertiser will essentially have to buy the information they need to optimize their campaign through trial and error.

One of the things I try to determine early in a client relationship is how aggressive or conservative they want to be. If they have plenty of margin in their product or want to achieve an optimized campaign sooner rather than later, we can be more aggressive. Most of the time it depends on how committed they are to using AdWords as an advertising channel. On the other hand, if there is less margin to work with and the advertiser is tentative about using AdWords, we take a more conservative approach.

There is one caveat that comes with implementing this strategy however. It has to do with the fact that there will be a point of saturation. That means there will be a finite amount of traffic that meets your criteria and the only way to get more traffic is to raise the amount you are willing to pay for a conversion. That is why it’s critical to have accurate, reliable and comprehensive conversion tracking in place. Please refer to my articles titled Conversion tracking and Telephone conversions for more information. If you are not tracking the right actions or you are only tracking a portion of the actual conversions, it will be reflected in your ability to optimize your account.

Another important element of the process is choosing the right keywords and the right keyword matching options, but that’s the topic for another discussion.

If you plan to promote your website using Google AdWords you need to be mindful of how Google is evolving their policies because it can have a significant impact on your ROI. By ROI I mean what you pay Google in click charges verses what you get back in the way of business.

I created this post with the intention of educating you, the business owner. I realize that at some point in reading this, it will be beyond your technical knowledge. The rest of it, the stuff that is over your head, is for your web developer. I suggest you consider making this part of the statement of work (SOW) between you and your web developer.

Gone are the days of long-tail keywords, one-page sales letters, squeeze pages, vanity URLs and those black hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques. These changes are already having a significant impact on the Information Marketing and Affiliate Marketing industries. Google is rapidly evolving their quality score algorithm to be more SEO like. SEO is the way you get your website found through organic or natural search.

There are two things to be aware of.

If you or your web developer uses any black hat techniques for the purposes of SEO, Google could blacklist your site, your company and possibly even YOU, from appearing on Google ever again. Your entire business or any business you create in the future could be affected. Whatever short-term gains you might get are not worth the long-term penalties you might be subject to. Besides, you would only be prolonging the inevitable anyway.

Google has been quietly rolling out their new policies over the past couple of years. But every so often, they stop simply suggesting and start enforcing. Those of us in the business call it a Google slap! When that happens, some people have a very rude awakening and their online business takes a nosedive.

If you want to achieve the best possible ROI from your AdWords campaign, then there are certain things you need to do as a business owner and certain things your web developer needs to keep in mind as they create and maintain your website.

As a business owner, you need to specify the overall architecture, feature and function of your website. Web developers need to make sure the site is designed, developed and implemented to Google’s specifications, for the purpose of optimizing for AdWords.

When it comes to having the best possible ROI using AdWords, it’s all about relevance. Relevance means having tightly themed ad groups with highly relevant ad copy, with relevant landing page copy that is consistent with the rest of your website.

One of the major factors in determining what you pay per click and your ads ranking in the search results is known as landing page quality score. Most of these factors have to do with what you actually say on the landing page, how transparent you are and how easy it is to navigate your website. Rarely should you be sending prospects from a PPC campaign to your website home page, but sometimes it is appropriate.

Some of the aspects of landing page quality, as well as the overall website design, will be handled by the web developer. This usually depends on how knowledgeable you are about website design and the actual Google policies. In any case, you should make your web developer aware of Google’s webmaster guidelines so there will be no misunderstandings.

Now that you have an idea for the dos and don’ts, let’s come at this from a different angle so we increase the chances of maximizing your ROI. As a business owner, it is your responsibility to insure that your website is not what’s holding you back when it comes to getting the most from your AdWords campaign, and in fact, is what sets you apart from your competition.

Don’t expect your web developer to be your chief marketing strategist. They are typically graphic artists and technical geeks, not marketers. Most websites I see for small to medium-sized businesses are little more than online brochures. However, in fairness to their web developer, that’s probably exactly what the business owner asked for. I myself am a combination career marketing professional and part technical geek, but not a web developer. Just what you might expect for someone who does what I do.

Remember what I said earlier about relevance? Well, let’s peel back the onion a bit and see what that really means. Ideally, Google would like a user (your prospect) to perform a search using a query phrase that describes what it is they are looking for. They would see your ad with the actual query phrase they used in the headline of your ad. They would click on your ad because it was the clearest and most compelling ad on the page, and they were deposited at your landing page. The landing page would be all about the thing they were searching for and the rest of your website would have lots of relevant information about the topic they were interested in. And because your website was so great and packed with all kinds of relevant stuff, they would never have a need to search for that thing ever again. That is what Google would call the perfect user experience! I also discuss the topic of relevance in my post titled A chain of success.

Now let’s get specific. What are the things you need to do to insure your visitor has the best user experience, you maximize your landing page quality score and you still have a website that sells! Here are some suggestions:

The website development application. I’m getting a little out of my league here, but hopefully this will make sense. If you are like many of my clients, small business owners who want the ability to create and update content on your site without having to call your webmaster or learn a website development tool like Dreamweaver or FrontPage, then I suggest you work with a developer who will build your website with this in mind. Content management systems (CMS) such as WordPress could be just the ticket. FLASH sites are old news and will not work well with AdWords because the AdWords bot cannot interpret FLASH code.

Have a clear navigation structure. It’s OK to have pages that are off the navigation structure as long as the navigation structure is on every page and you don’t lead visitors down a dead-end path.

Landing pages specifically designed for each product or line of products if appropriate. Have the primary keyword as part of the “h1” tag on every product page. Have enough content on the landing page to reinforce the relevance to your ad and have a 2-3% keyword density for that keyword.

Make sure your meta tags conform to Google’s best practices; tags for <title>, <description> and <keyword>. There are format and length specification to be aware of. Here is a link to a nice little tutorial on the importance of meta tags.

Make sure all your images have what are called “alt tags”. This allows the search engine spiders to know what the image is. If you can describe the image in a way that is relevant to your topic, it helps your quality score.

Many successful online marketers will tell you that their most important asset is a quality email list for clients and prospects, which he/she has cultivated a good relationship with. There are several techniques you can use to build your list, but for the purpose of website development I recommend you have several “give-to-gets” and you capture visitor information using a good autoresponder like www.1shoppingcart.com or www.aweber.com.

If you do implement an autoresponder or any other form that collects personal information, it is essential that you also provide a privacy policy that discloses how the information will be used and that you give options to limit the use of a user’s personal information, such as the ability to opt out of receiving regular emails.

Become an expert on the topic your product or service is about. Have articles, preferably ones you created and published, product reviews and opinions. The more relevant content the better and it must be unique. Make sure it has a human voice to it and that you use the keywords you want to optimize for repeatedly throughout the document and don’t simply copy something from another website, Google will know and discount your quality score.

Whenever possible, avoid FLASH. Here are two reasons, 1) search engines spiders (the little programs that read your website and decide how good it is) can’t understand FLASH, it looks like a big blob to them. 2) FLASH does not SELL, it distracts the visitor! It’s wizzy and cool and web developers love to do stuff in FLASH, but it distracts the visitor from that one thing that is the entire purpose of your website. Get the visitor to do what you want them to do. Fill out a form, download a whitepaper, call you on the phone or how about this, buy something! With that said, FLASH does have its place when it comes to instructional or entertainment applications.

Have a blog. One of the best things you can do to improve your quality score is to have fresh, unique, relevant content. That’s exactly what having a blog will do.

If you sell something on the site, have a page which clearly states your terms.

Have an About Us page. Let visitors know there is a real person at the other end of the internet. Have a real physical address, a real person’s name and a phone number with a real person on the other end that is helpful in ways other than simply qualifying leads.

Google is bringing more and more of the organic search criteria into the pay-per-click (AdWords) side of their business. Years ago, ranking was all about what was on your web pages; proper use of meta tags, keyword density and other “on-page” characteristics. Today, page ranking is 80% “off-page” and only 20% on-page. Off-page means, who is linking to your site and how highly their site is ranked. If their site is ranked higher than your site, it pulls you up in the ranking and increases your quality score. If you think about it, it’s just like relationships in the real world. If you know popular and influential people then you become more popular and influential yourself.Whether you need to consider the time and expense of creating quality in-bound links will be determined by your current keyword and landing page quality scores. In many cases, the quality scores will be heavily influenced by the amount of competition for that keyword. If the keyword is relatively unique and has relatively little search volume, chances are you will not need to invest in in-bound links. On the other hand, if the keyword is quite broad and there is a lot of competition, having lots of high-quality in-bound links is one way you can increase your quality score and differentiate yourself from the competition.

In a perfect world, the words you use to describe your product or service would be exactly how people search for it online and your website would use those same words and phrases. Unfortunately, that doesn’t usually happen. Website developers and traditional media advertisers who have experience developing advertising copy; brochures, articles, advertisements, believe they can use the same vocabulary that worked for traditional media when they build web pages for visitors from search engines. But that can be a costly mistake!

Achieving a truly optimized search engine advertising campaign goes beyond the elements of your PPC campaign, such as keywords, bid prices, ad copy, etc. It also includes how you design your website, the use of custom landing pages, the words you use on your landing pages and the rest of your website.

Many advertisers, including myself, at one time designed their website from the inside-out. In other words, how they see themselves in the market or how they see the market niche they are in. Instead of from the outside-in, meaning how visitors from search engines think and what they actually search for. The inside-out approach may work fine for prospects from other channels or existing customers. However, visitors from search engines are a unique kind of prospect. They may be somewhat naive about the topic they are interested in. They can also become overwhelmed or confused by the variety of content for what they thought was a very specific topic. They can also be quite cynical and usually have very little patience.

The way you have designed your website may make perfect sense to you, your existing customers and even industry pundants. However, if it doesn’t relate well to how prospects from search engines actually search for what you offer, what I call the search vocabulary of your market, then your campaign will be far from optimal.

There are two important reasons why you need to be aware of this. The first has to do with what prospects are thinking when they use a search engine. The second has to do with how the Google AdWords game is played. Let’s take a closer look at each of these.

If you haven’t already done so, this would be a good time to pause and read my article titled A chain of success and the subsequent linked articles.

If the way you describe your product or service and the keywords you use to build your campaign, do not match how prospects search for what you offer, you will not only limit your exposure to real prospects, but if they do manage to reach your landing page and you do not use their search vocabulary, you will have created what we call friction. It would be as if you were having a conversation with someone with a very heavy foreign accent. For example, you may advertise yourself as a psychotherapist or a psychiatrist. However, when real people with real problems search online, they are more likely to use words like therapy, counseling or help. If you don’t take this into consideration when building your campaign, you will be missing out on the biggest segment of your target market. If your landing page does not quickly and efficiently alter their thought process and bring them around to your way of thinking, you will have missed the opportunity to engage with a legitimate prospect. When a visitor from a search engine lands on your website for the first time, you have 3-5 seconds to make a connection. If you don’t, they will bounce!

When you think of using PPC advertising, whether it’s Google AdWords or Bing™Ads, you must understand that there are rules that manifest themselves in the form of a quality score. These quality scores are a way of incentivizing or punishing you for being relevant or speaking the same language as the search engine user and the search engine’s robot. If your keyword, ad copy, landing page and website do not speak the same language as your visitor, you will not only pay a hefty penalty in the form of a higher CPC, but your ad may not display for a significant number of real prospects!

If you think about the process I discuss in the A chain of success, article it is possible to pull the prospect around to your way of thinking and not break the chain, but you need to be very careful. Keywords and keyword matching options, especially negative keywords will insure that your ad only displays for the right suspects. Proper ad copy can perform a valuable translation and qualifying function. Custom landing pages, if designed properly, will keep a qualified prospect engaged long enough for you to pull them into your sales process.

When you have the benefit of historical data in your AdWords and Analytics accounts, you are on your way to learning what I call the search vocabulary of your market. On the other hand, if you are just beginning your online advertising experience and you have built your website with little or no knowledge of your market’s search vocabulary, you are at a distinct disadvantage. It means you will essentially have to buy this knowledge. By this I mean you will have to learn it over time, at some expense by buying clicks in order to capture the data. There is no keyword tool in existence that can compare with a rich search term history from your own website, AdWords or Analytics account.

Where you stand in relation to the processes I’ve discussed will determine where you are along the path to having a truly optimized PPC campaign.

Having a successful AdWords campaign is all about managing your ROI. This means maximizing your exposure for relevant search queries and minimizing your exposure for poor quality searches that result in unwanted clicks.

I often review AdWords accounts where a lot of the ad spend has been consumed by relatively poor quality clicks. In most cases, it’s due to what I call The broad match effect. This is where Google displays your ad for synonyms of a broad-matched keyword that you never anticipated and would not have allowed if you knew you had paid for it.

Maximizing your exposure means choosing the right keywords and keyword matching options. Minimizing your exposure to poor quality search queries is also accomplished by carefully selecting keywords and keyword matching options, but also complementing them with an extensive list of negative keywords. This activity is what separates the novice from the professional AdWords campaign manager. To explain the details of how this is done, would be to explain how Google’s algorithm works. This has taken me several years to learn and it’s always changing. Google’s algorithm is their secret sauce and they are never going to tell us exactly how it works.

Poor quality search queries must be blocked from triggering your ad and causing an impression. Having too many impressions and not enough clicks, creates a low Click-Through-Rate (CTR). Low CTR creates low Quality Scores and low quality scores result in higher Cost-Per-Click (CPC) and lower Impression Share. When your existing campaign has a history of low impression share, it means that your ad isn’t displaying for some of your best prospects. Low impression share results from having a daily budget that is too low or ads appearing too low in the ranking.

It is possible to filter most of the obvious poor quality traffic by analyzing account history, assuming there is enough history, and by using various keyword tools. However, when that layer of poor traffic is peeled away, it only exposes another layer of offenders, hence my selecting the title “Peeling the onion”.

This situation exists when:

There are only one or two words that form the core phrase of keywords that describe your product or service.

There are a very large number of complementary words that significantly reduce the quality of the visitor / click.

My first pass at identifying and implementing negative keywords will be done early in the process of me understanding your business. Therefore, it will probably take several “peels of the onion” to ultimately optimize your account. My ability to maximize your ROI is proportional to:

The time I have to work on your account (the research and fine-tuning process) and

the level of cooperation I get from you, the business owner or manager.

It’s important to understand that this is an iterative process and no one ever gets it exactly right the first time. It simply underscores the importance of what I call fine-tuning a new campaign or ad group once it has been launched.

There are two factors that will make a considerable difference in how long the process takes and how efficient the process will be. One is conversion tracking, the other is website analytics.

Conversion tracking allows us to tie a search term and keyword to your desired action, such as filling out a contact form. However, if your most desired action is a phone call, this presents another challenge. See my article titled Telephone conversions.

By using custom reports in Google Analytics, we can determine how well a keyword and search query are performing based on things such as; bounce rate, number of pages visited and average time spent per page. After analyzing this data, we can make further adjustments to keywords, matching options ad copy and bid prices.

Here is another important aspect of maximizing ROI. Some of your keywords need to be in the top positions, while others should be further down the ranking, depending on how valuable the query is to your business. In order to do this properly, I will need to have a good understanding of your market, your competition, your business and your products and/or services.

One last thing I want to point out. A search term that you paid $1 for with a broad match keyword, may cost you $5-10 when you specifically target that term with a more restrictive keyword matching option. That’s the downside. The upside is, your ad will now display for that term a lot more often (Impression Share), and you will have more control over where your ad appears on the page (ad rank). Once you have control of the term, you can create ad copy and landing pages that are much more relevant, which will increase your conversion rate. A higher Conversion Rate and a lower Cost-Per-Conversion is the key to maximizing your ROI in Google AdWords.

My mentor, Perry Marshall, uses a graphic called The Tactical Triangle to make a very important point about PPC advertising. You can read more about it on his website by clicking here. But I’ll give you the essence of it and add some of my own examples based on working with clients.

The reason Perry uses this particular graphic is to 1) show that there are three essential elements of a successful PPC campaign implementation and 2) achieving success requires using an iterative process of testing and improving the things that are most important, hence the 80/20 rule.

The three corners of the triangle are Traffic, Conversions and Economics. Unless the advertiser has an appreciation for the entire end-to-end online selling process, they won’t be able to make significant progress in their online business because AdWords is only the Traffic piece. If the advertiser only focus on the mechanics of AdWords, there is a chance the biggest opportunity may be overlooked. You see, AdWords is about what happens, before the click, Conversion optimization is what happens after the click and none of this has any chance of working if the Economics don’t work.

Sometimes the biggest obstacles preventing an advertiser from being more successful with AdWords, has little to do with their AdWords account. There are lots of other factors that will determine the ultimate success of their AdWords campaign. The real problem may be because:

Their online business model is flawed. There isn’t enough profit in a product or service to justify PPC advertising. This is the Economics piece of the triangle.

They don’t have an appreciation for the mindset of visitors from a search engine. They are cynical, skeptical and have very little patience.

They don’t appreciate the inherent “shopping” nature of an online visitor and the associated (ROI) metrics.

They haven’t taken the time to understand their online competitive standing.

Their website, especially their landing page, is not optimized for visitors from search. The landing page and website are little more than an online brochure. It doesn’t SELL!

While you may see several competitors in a market and think you can compete and win, you may not know their unique business model. It’s possible that their entire ad spend and infrastructure could be paid for by another segment of their business. Or they may be willing to lose money in the market you are in, because they have a back-end product line with much higher profit margins.

When it comes to the performance of the advertiser’s AdWords account, here are some of the most common issues I see:

They don’t understand the psychology behind the search query or what’s going on inside the head of the user. A “User” is what Google calls anyone who uses a search engine or visits a website displaying ads.

They focus too much on keywords and not enough on search queries.

They don’t appreciate that every search query is a market unto itself.

They don’t realize that every search query has a unique value to their business.

They don’t have a viable bidding strategy. They let their ego get in the way or they have no plan whatsoever. I can’t tell you how many prospects I speak with that simply want to be in the top position”. Big mistake!

They don’t understand the importance of keyword matching options or how to use them effectively.

Having a successful PPC campaign means we have to get a lot of things right. We have to make sure we understand and address all the steps in the buying cycle and don’t leave anything to chance or the ROI will suffer. After all, online marketing is really salesmanship in print.

Most advertisers I come in contact with struggle, knowingly or unknowingly with one important principle of advertising, understanding and empathizing with prospects from search engines. Visitors from search, organic or PPC, are different from other visitors and your website must take this into account if you are going to have a successful PPC campaign.

Visitors from search are cynical, skeptical and have very little patience. From the moment they arrive on your landing page, you have three to five seconds to make a connection. If you don’t, they will leave and probably will not come back.

When we meet someone in person we can size up the situation by looking for body signals, listening to conversation, appearance, etc. But with online advertising, we have to rely on technology and copy (ad text, website text, graphics, etc.). I like to think of the process as a chain, and this chain is only as strong as its weakest link. If any link breaks, we lose the prospect and the resources we spent getting them to this point are wasted.

Here is how I describe the chain and the links within the chain:

What the prospect is thinking

What they actually type, i.e. the search query

The linkage between the search query and the advertiser’s keyword (matching options)

The actual keyword

The ad copy; headline, description and display URL

Your landing page priorities:

Capturing the visitor attention

Generating interest

Creating desire

Taking action

Conversion tracking

Your follow up mechanism

Making adjustments to improve the process or “making the chain stronger”

Ideally, everything is tied together into one continuous thought. If it isn’t, if you have left out a step or taken too big a leap in the process or failed to anticipate what they are thinking, you will lose them.

A common mistake AdWords advertisers make is not focusing on relevance. They build campaigns, ad groups, ads and use keywords that are only somewhat related to what it is they are offering in hopes of attracting a wider audience. When that happens, they usually fail at using AdWords as a viable channel for their business.

The trap that we as advertisers often fall into is knowing too much about our own business and not enough about our prospect or our competition. The choices our prospects have besides our own view of the problem they are trying to solve. We focus too much on things like features and not enough on benefits. For example, we see a keyword or query phrase and don’t realize how broad the term is.

Have you taken the time to do competitive research? Have you tried searching the major search engines using your most popular search queries? Have you studied your competitor’s landing pages, user experience, offers, calls-to-action? Have you opted-into their offer to see how they market to you? If you haven’t, then you have a ways to go before your AdWords account is optimized.

Keyword selection and keyword matching options is perhaps the single biggest issue I see when I first look at a client’s account. This is especially true when it comes to clients who offer a service. Here is a test you can do yourself. Take some of your most popular keywords and perform a Google search to see who else is bidding for those same keywords. If they aren’t selling exactly what you are, then there is a good chance your keyword is too broad.

The other problem has to do with using and understanding how powerful and yet dangerous broad-matched keywords can be when Google experiments with synonyms.

Another way of viewing the successful AdWords model is to look at it through the lense of probability. A successful AdWords campaign is really a collection of proven, high-probability models. What is the probability that someone searching using this search query, who sees this ad and goes to this landing page, will take the desired action. Our objective is to build a campaign that gives us the most number of high-probability models. This means that there will likely be some search queries that resulted in a conversion, but you simply can’t afford to focus on that query because you can’t make the numbers work. It’s simply a matter of economics.

Think of your landing page as your “elevator pitch”. Once the prospect arrives at your landing page, or enters the elevator, you better be prepared to give it your best shot because it may be your last!